You may not know it, but eating disorders affect your teeth. Eating disorders take their toll on your health. Maybe you’re feeling that you’re always fatigued or that you get sick more often than not. Perhaps your skin’s gotten dry or your hair’s starting to fall out. But another impact of eating disorders is on your teeth. Eating disorders that go untreated could cause a number of issues with your oral health such as gum disease, erosion of tooth enamel and even loss of teeth.

Images of impossibly thin women with micro-waistlines and not a pucker of cellulite swamp the media. Luckily, we’re getting better at spotting the fakes. Thanks to widespread awareness campaigns, we know that, because of Photoshop’s “enhancing effects,” the models we see on posters and in magazines whose physiques seem too good to be true are just that—not true.

An unexpected break-up, past criticisms, the calorie intake in a meal, the amount of money sitting in a bank… These are all examples of everyday topics that often result in consuming, repetitive and persistent thoughts. Why do we develop obsessive thought patterns and how can we free ourselves from them?

You’ve heard the term “binging,” as in binge eating and binge drinking. It means excessively indulging in an activity, especially eating. Like binging on chocolate or going on a binge by drinking too much liquor. I have experience with both.

Mothers need to be deeply aware of what they convey to their daughters through the attitudes they model about their own relationship to their bodies, their self-talk about how they look or “ought to” look, and how secure they seem in their choices. When a mother is battling low self-esteem or not even battling because she’s unaware it’s a root cause of frustration within her life, her daughter is likely to carry this burden as well.